Electronic design automation (EDA) is a category of tools that facilitate the design of complex electronic systems such as integrated circuits. Over the years, EDA tools have become increasingly complex. EDA tools have evolved from simple circuit simulators such as SPICE to include most aspects of logic design, layout, and verification. One aspect of integrated circuit design that is now encompassed by EDA tools is the synthesis of large portions (or entire) application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) from higher level behavioral models such as Verilog and VHDL. This synthesis process generates design implementations in terms of logic gates from higher level behavioral models.